It is what has created a situation in which the administrators say that Visteon UK owes more than £400 million to Visteon Corp.

So the company owes money to itself, although the accounts show that the debt doesn’t have to be repaid until 2016.

The precise nature of all the inter-company relationships is hard to discover, and deliberately so.

Visteon UK accounts state that, “The company has taken advantage of the exemption under Financial Reporting Standard 8 – Related party disclosures not to disclose related party transactions with Visteon Corporation or any of its wholly-owned group undertakings.”

And it may not be just Visteon UK that is wound down as part of the outsourcing trick.

The Visteon corporation itself could be pushed into bankruptcy. It has retained the services of Rothschild, a New York-based corporate restructuring firm, as well as Kirkland & Ellis, a New York-based law firm specialising in bankruptcy and corporate restructuring.

While outsourcing keeps the true nature of Ford and Visteon hidden, we do know that, while workers are thrown on the scrapheap, the bosses will look after themselves.

Visteon UK’s pension fund has collapsed. But fortunately the bosses were able to move their pensions to Visteon Engineering Limited – a part of the company that hasn’t been shut down.

In 2007, the year a secret plan to run down Visteon UK was produced, Michael F Johnston, the then boss of Visteon, got a salary of $1,341,667. This was topped up to a staggering $8,393,607 with shares and bonuses.

Donald J Stebbins, the chief executive of Visteon Corp, got at least $1.48 million in cash and bonuses last year.